Progressive Collapse Of A

Drilled Shaft Bridge

Foundation Under Vessel
Impact
1

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Content
Abstract
Introduction
Site Description
Piers and superstructure
Ground conditions
Failure of the bridge under vessel
impact
Drilled shafts and columns

Conclusions

References
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Abstract
On 15 June 2007, a pier of the 1675 m long Jiujiang Bridge near Guangzhou, China
was impacted by a vessel.
The pier being impacted and two adjacent piers collapsed in a sequence and
approximately 200 m of the bridge deck fell into the river.
Each of the three piers was supported on a 1.7 m diameter, 2 x 2 drilled shaft group.
The simulation model includes all three drilled shaft groups as an integrated system
connected by a bridge deck.
The bending moment, displacement and soil reaction along the drilled shafts are
computed.
The pier foundation being impacted collapsed rst.
The failure of this pier was initiated at the connections between the pile cap and the
drilled shafts and between the pile cap and the pier columns.
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Introduction

Bridge piers adjacent to navigation channels are usually at risk of accidental

collisions by errant ships.

Sometimes ships deviate from the navigation channel and collide on off-navigation
channel piers, which can lead to catastrophic consequences since the off- navigation
channel piers are often designed with a relatively small lateral bearing capacity.

Different structural systems exhibit different degrees of sensitivity to progressive

failure, which is often neglected in conventional design analysis.
Traditional design usually pays more attention to the safety of individual structural
elements than to the safety of the entire structural system.
As a result, failure of one member of a bridge system may cause the progressive
collapse of several members or even the whole system.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the system failure mechanisms of bridge
foundations under vessel impact.
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Site Description

Jiujiang Bridge is part of National Highway G325, which crosses West Pearl River
and connects Jiujiang and Jiangmen City in Guangdong Province, China, as shown in
Fig. 1.
It is 1675 m long and has 43 spans (Fig. 2).
The bridge has been on service since June 12, 1988.
The major part of the bridge consists of two navigation channel spans, each 160 m
long and 21 off-channel spans including 19 spans 50 m in length and 2 spans 40 m in
length.

In addition, there are 20 approach spans, each 16 m long.

The bridge deck is 15.5 m wide with a 14 m wide carriageway and two 0.75 m wide
pedestrian lanes on both sides.

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Site Description

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Site Description

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Site Description

9
Piers and superstructure:

Piers no. 23, 24 and 25 had the same type of structure.

Each consisted of four drilled shafts, two columns, one pile cap, and one pier cap,
as shown in Fig. 3. In the gure, S1, S2, S3, S4, C1 and C2 represent four drilled
shafts and two columns.
The piers are connected with continuous concrete box girders.
The cross section of the original bridge deck is composed of two boxes.

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Ground conditions:
The site around the collapsed piers is underlain sequentially by a ne sand layer, a
gravelly sand layer and slightly or moderately decomposed granite.

The ground conditions near Piers no. 2325 are shown in Fig. 4. The properties
of the soil layers are summarized in Table 2.

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Failure of the bridge under vessel impact

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In the early morning of June 15, 2007, a vessel named Nanguiji 035 with a
cargo of sand strayed from the navigation channel and struck on Pier no. 23, a
bridge pier adjacent to the non-navigation channel.
Most part of the vessel sunk into the water leaving the buttock above the water
(Fig. 5).

The vessel was 1000 tons in self weight and the sand it carried weighted 2800
tons.

The velocity of the vessel before impact was estimated as approximately 15 km/h.
The accident caused three piers, Piers no. 23, 24, and 25, and approximately 200m bridge deck to fall into the river.

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Drilled shafts and columns

16

Each pier includes four drilled shafts, two pier columns, one pile cap and one
pier cap (Fig. 3).
The dimensions of the cross sections and the arrangement of the steel
reinforcement bars are according to the design in Section 2.1 Piers and
superstructure and Fig. 3.

The properties of the concrete and steel reinforcement bars follow the design
values.

The compressive strength is 16.7 MPa and the elastic modulus is 28 GPa.

The stressstrain relationship of the steel reinforcement is assumed to be

elastic, perfectly plastic.

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Conclusions
The failure process of Jiujiang Bridge on 15 June 2007 during a vessel impact
is investigated by numerical analysis.
The main conclusions are as follows:
The static bearing capacity of the piers under static loading either at the
pile cap or pier cap is much smaller than the equivalent static load from
the vessel impact calculated using the AASHTO method.
The failure of the pier subjected to vessel impact is initiated at the
connection between the columns and the drilled shafts where the bending
moments are the largest and exceed the bending capacities of the columns
and drilled shafts.
The soil reactions are not fully mobilized when the impacted pier fails.

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Conclusions
A failure process is proposed based on the results of detailed dynamic analysis. The
progressive failure was resulted from the separation of structural elements and the
centrifugal forces of the falling bridge deck.
The deck then rotated about one end of the adjacent pier, which generated large
centrifugal forces on the adjacent pier.
Subsequently, the adjacent pier was pulled to failure by the centrifugal forces,
leading to the cutoff of the bridge deck above the adjacent pier.
In the same way, the nearby pier was pulled to failure by the centrifugal forces
from the rotation of the falling bridge deck.
Such a progressive failure process stopped when a bridge joint was encountered.

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References

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AASHTO, 2007. LRFD Bridge Design Specications. American Association of State Highway and Transportation
Ofcials, Washington, D.C.

Biezma, M.V., Schanack, F., 2007. Collapse of steel bridges. J. Perform. Constructed Facilities 21 (5), 398405.

Brown, D.A., Morrison, C., Reese, L.C., 1988. Lateral load behavior of a pile group in sand. J. Geotech. Geoenviron.
Eng. 114 (11), 12611276.

Chu, L.M., Zhang, L.M., 2011. Centrifuge modeling of ship impact loads on bridge pile foundations. J. Geotech.
Geoenviron. Eng. 137 (4), 405420.

Consolazio, G.R., Cowan, D.R., 2005. Numerical efcient dynamic analysis of barge collisions with bridge piers. J.
Struct. Eng. 131 (8), 12561266.

Consolazio, G.R., Cook, R.A., McVay, M.C., 2006. Barge Impact Testing of the St. George Island Causeway Bridge,
Phase III: Physical Testing and Data Interpreta- tion. Structures Research Report, University of Florida, Florida.

Consolazio, G.R., Davidson, M.T., 2008. Simplied dynamic barge collision analysis for bridge design. Transp. Res.
Rec. 2050, 1325.

Florida Bridge Software Institute, 2009. FB-MultiPier Help Manual. University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.

Ghali, A., Tadros, G., 1997. Bridge progressive collapse vulnerability. J. Struct. Eng. 123 (2), 227231.
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Thank you

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